


somewhere a clock is ticking

by afrocurl



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-13
Updated: 2012-06-13
Packaged: 2017-11-07 15:16:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/432563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/pseuds/afrocurl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a foregone conclusion that she’d make something of herself. Her first words said it all.</p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>  <i>On her last day at the CIA, there are flowers at her desk. A cake arrives at lunch.</i></p><p> </p><p>It’s a nice sentiment, but feels like too little too late; she’s been here so long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	somewhere a clock is ticking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monopolizers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monopolizers/gifts).



> Many thanks to N, PS, SS and U for their help as I wrestled with this piece.

She wasn’t born with a silver spoon, but there were advantages to being part of a family who worked for the Federal government--a good home, access to more than most. Father worked as a low-level bureaucrat for Roosevelt, hours spent away from home, trying to bring the country out of the state it was in. Unlike Ma’s family out in Iowa, here was food--meager as it was--on the table, a roof over their heads. 

Words, conversations, flowed in the small home.

Her first words were at nine months. After that, her parents wouldn’t keep her from asking questions. Signs, even in those times that Moira MacTaggert was meant to listen _and_ to be heard.

She was meant to make waves all the way from their small home in Maryland to Catholic University.

It was a foregone conclusion that she’d make something of herself. Her first words said it all.

-

_On her last day at the CIA, there are flowers at her desk. A cake arrives at lunch._

_It’s a nice sentiment, but feels like too little too late; she’s been here so long, been through too much for it all to be made better with trivial demonstrations._

_Equity would be a better reward for the years of oppression she faced. Some way to make up for the lost years relegated to her desk instead of the field because she’d been “too emotional” for it._

_Instead, it’s flowers and dry cake, and not at all how she’d like to finish her fifty years of service._

_She’s outgrown so much here._

-

There wasn’t much in their house, despite the government paychecks, but there was still a radio and a rag doll that her mother sewed together from old pieces of dresses that had become threadbare.

In that doll Moira found a sounding board, someone who always listened, no matter if she talked about boys or Roosevelt’s plans--piecing together her parents’ thoughts with hers in the quiet of her room.

Dark times grew dimmer. Japan attacked. War loomed.

There was need to help the common man in these dark times.

The doll sat there, impassive as always, and listened as Moira made a case for fighting not only the Japanese, but Hitler as well. Moira practicing her public speaking for graduation from middle school, using impassioned anger here where she’d replace it with sadness and loss later.

-

_The Cold War over, Moira feels stilted and lost. She’s not sure what to do now that all of those years working are irrelevant. Lost is the pull of worry in her stomach as the Soviets worked through Asia after all that happened in Cuba._

_She thinks about all of the men that gave her shit after Cuba. Thinks about their greed and their lust for more power. Thinks about time spent working on plans for Vietnam. (Plans of attack that failed so readily that those men were out of the office before she was back on field work, her reputation still damaged from Cuba.)_

_These thoughts make the first day out of the CIA seem better; knowing that she outlasted men--men who thought her vapid, incapable of doing the work._

-

Despite the World War II being over, Moira focused on International Relations: figuring out how to avoid catastrophe and keeping the country safe.

Russian, somehow, was still part of the curriculum. While she’d watched as German had been forced from her high school, Catholic hadn’t chosen to stop teaching Russian just because they were now the enemy.

The language was harsh, but it was useful. She’d always been told to “know thy enemy,” and there was no other way to do that as the Iron Curtain expanded, sending dark shadows looming across the rubble of Europe.

She found a calling in it, a deep desire to put things right. Using her skills with Russian to work for her country--follow Father’s footsteps--take what had turned sour and _try_ to stop Communism’s spread. Stop tyranny from trampling the weak and defenseless.

-

_Her CIA desk, what little she could take with her, goes into the attic. Hidden away. Her past, it was just that. To be forgotten._

_Her looks at her home, looks at the space she’s created in odd moments of prolonged stays, and she knows she can create something else._

_Something new._

 

-

The CIA, even as a connection through her father’s low level work in the government, was a far off dream that she didn’t quite expect to become a reality. It became obvious that it was the logical step from her work in International Relations, but it wasn’t what she imagined it would be.

Her interview was exhausting. Questions fired rapidly about her skills with languages and under what conditions she’d work as a field agent. She had no problems speaking in public, she was sure of that, and she had no problems travelling--something she’d longed to do, but hadn’t found time--relishing in the question as if it was a possibility that she’d been sent to France or Kiev for a mission.

Moira MacTaggart left the interview, waiting for news on if she’d be accepted into their training program. One small step towards being a full field agent in two years.

-

_Change follows her after the CIA. She sets up a small garden in her Rosslyn home; she spends time cultivating her skills at the domestic side of life._

_Her mother wasn’t one to focus on planting flowers, times being what they had been, but Moira looks at the garden as something of a starting over. Her garden: a suggestion of what else she could have been. Had her passion not drawn her away from simple pleasures, her garden would have been started years before._

-

More often than not, she was the joke. Always the joke.

_Why aren’t you in the steno pool?_

_Do you know how to load that, honey?_

_Care to spend a little time with me after work, sweetheart?_

Misogyny at its basest.

She’d rise above it. Keep her head down, focus to the point of single-mindedness.

Being an equal meant being better. She’d work twice (or three times) as hard just to make them see that she had as much a right to be there as they did.

She’ll be the best, despite her colleagues’ bullshit, she’ll do what she needed to do.

-

_Her life is simple. There’s her garden, slowly developing into something she can be proud of._

_There’s time to read, enjoy the little things, to settle for days of reading Agatha Christie and listening to NPR._

_President Clinton’s involved in a sex scandal. It’s not her job to care about that. Injustice in Africa piques her interest and she puts down the book, listening to the conversation about Rwanda._

_The story is of little concern for anything outside her new bubble of flowers and fiction._

_Her new focuses are decidedly unlike her time in the CIA._

-

There were times when she’s not actually _better_ than anyone, only resourceful.

Being one of three female field agents provided _some_ opportunities that Levine just can’t match.

Only that left her alone, surrounded by a woman who turned to diamonds and a man with red skin and tail who vanished and reappeared as if he were a magician.

There was nothing simple about looking into Sebastian Shaw.

If only she knew how to convey that to make her superiors believe her--to listen to her.

-

_There’s an attack on the UN Assembly by mutants. It sounds all too familiar. The face of the man on the news, Magneto, jolts her from the languid evening._

_He’s familiar, but she can’t place why._

_It’s no matter, she supposes, as the news focuses on an unnamed group that stopped the party from erupting into a newly evolved species._

_Déjà vu takes hold, but is gone just as quickly. It feels like fleeting memories of old age, but another part of her knows that it’s not only that. Hadn’t she met someone talking of a new species before?_  
-

No one believed her; of course they didn’t. She’d seen something that should be impossible, and yet after pinching herself five times, she still remembered the woman, her body morphing into cool ice, another man who threw small tornados and the man who looked like the devil himself.

Delving into more research back in the office, determination took over as she looked for anyone who could explain the sight she’d seen.

Science had progressed to the point where man had explained genetics; there must be someone who could explain how humans were capable of becoming something else. Creating something from themselves that had never been seen before.

Files littered her desk, vitaes of every professor or graduate student with an interest in genetics. Scores of names against crisp white sheets of paper, detailing their work and their studies.

She found someone: Charles Francis Xavier, Ph. D. candidate at Oxford.

A phone call to his department gave her more about his dissertation--a study of mutation on human beings over time and how it was mutation that lead to the rise of homo sapiens.

Her request for a trip to London was approved with only passing interest. She knew he thought her crazy, but she’d prove him wrong--show him that she wasn’t just a skirt to show off, but an agent with chops. She’d find the answers to the mysterious man with wind power and the woman who turned into diamond.

Just to prove them all that she could.

-

_Her last words mirror her first: prosperity._


End file.
